M.MOORE FILM IS FAKE NEWS ABOUT RENEWABLES... AND IT ADVOCATES A SKYROCKETING INCREASE IN THE NUMBER OF ABORTIONS (a.k.a LIMITING POPULATION GROWTH)... which all but DESTROY ECONOMIC GROWTH and U.S. CRONY CAPITALISM
The film offers a succession of talking heads, all bemoaning renewables — although there is not a grid scientist or energy expert among them.
Getting solar all wrong
It’s difficult to take the film seriously on any topic when it botches the solar portion so thoroughly. Although the film was released in 2020, the solar industry it examines, whether through incompetence or venality, is from somewhere back in 2009.
The film reports on a solar installation in Michigan with PV panels rated at “just under 8 percent” conversion efficiency. It’s difficult to identify the brand of panel in the film (Abound?) — but that efficiency is from another solar era.
The film pillories the Ivanpah thermal solar plant and SEGS, the original solar thermal power plant in Daggett, California, but fails to distinguish between overachieving photovoltaic solar and laggard thermal solar.
The film ignores the plunging cost of solar and its steadily increasing price advantage over coal and natural gas — as well as the similar trajectory of battery storage. It is plain wrong on renewables not displacing fossil fuels and it might be right in its excoriation of ethanol and biofuels.
This film is really about limiting population growth
If the filmmakers don’t believe renewables such as wind and solar are the answer, what do they believe?
Are they oil and gas supporters? It’s not clear. Nuclear proponents? Not clear, although Mike Shellenberger, nuclear advocate and renewables detractor, endorses the film.
The filmmakers don’t offer a plan to alter our energy course, but they certainly make population a theme.
They quote Heiger in the film, “There are too many human beings using too much, too fast.” Nina Jablonski called population growth “the herd of elephants in the room.” Another interviewed anthropologist spoke of population crashes.
They ask, “Can a single species that’s come to dominate the entire planet be smart enough to voluntarily limit its own presence? Removed from the debate is the only thing that might save us: getting a grip on our out-of-control human presence and consumption. Why is this not the issue? Because that would be bad for profits, bad for business.”
The film is long on criticism but offers no solution other than a vague non-capitalist pastoral alternative along with a bleak, harrowing final scene.
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